The 2009 edition of Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries’ performance. It provides a rich, comparable and up-to-date array of indicators on the performance of education systems and represents the consensus of professional thinking on how to measure the current state of education internationally.

The indicators look at who participates in education, what is spent on it and how education systems operate and at the results achieved. The latter includes indicators on a wide range of outcomes, from comparisons of students’ performance in key subject areas to the impact of education on earnings and on adults’ chances of employment. New material in this edition includes first results from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) on teacher practices as well as teacher appraisal and feedback; an analysis of the social benefits of education; information on long-term unemployment and involuntary part-time work among young adults; a review of trends in attainment; data on the incentives to invest in education which show the benefits of education in dollar amount across OECD countries; and a picture of excellence in education for 15-year-olds, based on findings from the PISA study.